What sources AI cites by industry: 9,375 citations in Chile (2026)

Updated November 7, 2026. When someone asks an AI tool which bank, store or university to choose, the answer comes with links. Those links are the sources AI cites, and they are not the same in every industry. To measure this we combined four AI visibility studies ESBUENISIMO LINKS ran between November 2 and 6, 2026: 222 buying questions about personal banking, car parts, energy for businesses and higher education, asked to six AI tools. In total, 1,233 answers and 9,375 citations.

The main finding: in all four industries, more than half of the citations go to third-party sites, not to the pages of the competing brands. But the kind of third party changes a lot. In banking a personal finance portal leads, in energy the government and regulators lead, and in car parts the press barely exists for AI.

9,375citations analyzed

1,233answers from 6 AI tools

69.1%of energy citations go to third parties

0.7%of car-parts citations go to news media

Source: ESBUENISIMO LINKS study: 222 questions in 6 AI tools, November 2-6, 2026

View the data as a table

citations analyzed	9,375
answers from 6 AI tools	1,233
of energy citations go to third parties	69.1%
of car-parts citations go to news media	0.7%

How we measured the sources AI cites

Each question was asked to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview and Google AI Mode from Chile, using the ESBUENISIMO LINKS measurement tool, which relies on the DataForSEO LLM responses API and each model's API. A site counts once per answer, even if it appears several times. We then classified each domain into eight types: the sites of the brands studied (18 to 37 per industry), other companies and their blogs, comparison sites and portals, government and regulators, news media, social networks, trade groups and academia, and Wikipedia.

The questions are buying questions, such as "which credit card should I get if I just started working?" or "where can I buy tires with installation included?". We do not name the companies behind the studies: only aggregate data is published. Eight Gemini answers about university programs were excluded because the app declined to answer ("I'm just a language model").

Energy and education are the industries where AI includes the most sources per answer (8.5 and 8.0). Banking and car parts sit around 7.

Sources AI cites by industry: the full picture

The table shows what share of citations goes to each type of site. Each column adds up to 100%, give or take rounding.

Sites of the brands studiedOther companies and blogsComparison sites and portalsGovernment and regulatorsNews mediaSocial networks and videoTrade groups and academiaWikipedia

Personal banking

Car parts

B2B energy

Higher education

Source: ESBUENISIMO LINKS study: 222 questions in 6 AI tools, November 2-6, 2026

View the data as a table

	Sites of the brands studied	Other companies and blogs	Comparison sites and portals	Government and regulators	News media	Social networks and video	Trade groups and academia	Wikipedia
Personal banking	34	29	19	10	4	3	1	1
Car parts	45	50	3	1	1	1	0	0
B2B energy	31	43	2	10	7	2	5	1
Higher education	48	24	15	5	4	2	0	2

In personal banking, a third of the citations (33.5%) go to the banks' own sites. The rest is split among other companies (29.4%, mostly fintechs, insurers, brokers and real estate firms), comparison sites and portals (18.6%) and the government (9.7%, led by the financial regulator CMF and the ChileAtiende public portal). For car parts, AI cites almost only stores: the brands studied (44.6%) plus other stores (50.0%) add up to 94.6%. Energy for businesses has the most institutional mix: government and regulators at 9.7%, news media at 6.6% and trade groups at 4.9%. In higher education, almost half of the citations (48.2%) go to the universities themselves.

The most cited sites in each industry

Leaving out the sites of the brands studied, these are the five domains cited in the most answers in each industry. The number of answers citing each one is in parentheses.

Site	Industry	Answers	% of industry answers
rankia.cl	Personal banking	229	55.7%
cmfchile.cl	Personal banking	80	19.5%
tasas.cl	Personal banking	54	13.1%
wise.com	Personal banking	48	11.7%
comparaonline.cl	Personal banking	43	10.5%
autofact.cl	Car parts	28	10.8%
neumastore.cl	Car parts	12	4.6%
tiendaneumaticos.cl	Car parts	11	4.2%
ytmotors.cl	Car parts	10	3.8%
repuestocenter.cl	Car parts	8	3.1%
energia.gob.cl	Energy for businesses	53	18.2%
cne.cl	Energy for businesses	35	12.0%
agenciadeprensa.cl	Energy for businesses	31	10.6%
coordinador.cl	Energy for businesses	28	9.6%
bcn.cl	Energy for businesses	27	9.2%
blog.filadd.cl	Higher education	43	15.9%
universidadeschile.cl	Higher education	40	14.8%
educacionsuperiorchile.cl	Higher education	33	12.2%
cursosycarreras.cl	Higher education	33	12.2%
en.wikipedia.org	Higher education	33	12.2%

Source: ESBUENISIMO LINKS study: 222 questions in 6 AI tools, November 2-6, 2026

The strongest case is Rankia: it shows up in 229 of the 411 banking answers (55.7%). No other site dominates an industry that much. We had already seen it in our study of the sources AI cites in finance, and with a bigger sample it holds.

In energy, the three most cited government sites are the Ministry of Energy (53 answers), the National Energy Commission (35) and the National Electricity Coordinator (28). In third place, among them, is agenciadeprensa.cl with 31: it is the blog of the PR agency that is a sister company of ESBUENISIMO LINKS, which publishes profiles of companies in the sector, and AI uses them as a source. Something similar happens in education with blog.filadd.cl, the blog of a test-prep school, which is the most cited site in the industry (43 answers). Both cases show the same thing: a site with organized, specific content gets into the answers even if it is not a big media outlet.

Car parts is the opposite: the most cited site, Autofact, reaches 28 of 260 answers (10.8%), followed by a long list of stores with 12 answers or fewer each. There, AI spreads its citations across many stores and barely uses intermediaries.

Each AI tool has its own source diet

Industry is not the only thing that changes the sources. Across all four industries, each AI tool shows clear preferences:

Sites of the brands studiedOther companies and blogsComparison sites and portalsGovernment and regulatorsNews mediaSocial networks and videoTrade groups and academiaWikipedia

ChatGPT

Gemini

Perplexity

Claude

AI Overview

AI Mode

Source: ESBUENISIMO LINKS study: 222 questions in 6 AI tools, November 2-6, 2026

View the data as a table

	Sites of the brands studied	Other companies and blogs	Comparison sites and portals	Government and regulators	News media	Social networks and video	Trade groups and academia	Wikipedia
ChatGPT	37	38	9	12	2	1	2	0
Gemini	41	38	11	5	3	2	2	0
Perplexity	52	27	9	4	5	3	1	0
Claude	27	42	13	6	6	0	2	4
AI Overview	37	32	8	5	3	13	2	0
AI Mode	47	29	11	6	3	4	2	0

• Perplexity cites the brands themselves the most: 51.7% of its citations.
• ChatGPT cites government and regulators the most (12.2%).
• Claude cites news media (6.4%) and Wikipedia the most: English Wikipedia shows up in 85 of its 215 answers.
• Google AI Overview gives 13.3% of its citations to social networks and video: Instagram (30 answers), YouTube (21), TikTok (19) and Facebook (14).

For a brand, this means doing well in one AI tool does not guarantee doing well in another. A clear Wikipedia entry helps more with Claude; an active Instagram or YouTube profile helps more with Google's summary.

What to do with the sources AI cites in your industry

The practical conclusion is that your own website is not enough. Between 51.8% (education) and 69.1% (energy) of citations go to sites the brand does not control. To show up in those answers you need to be in the sources AI already consults, and they differ by industry:

• Banking and finance: portals like Rankia, comparison sites and regulator listings. The brand's data on those sites must be complete and current.
• Energy and B2B services: regulators, trade groups and specialized media. Press releases with data and coverage in trade media help here; we explain it in our guide to press releases for ChatGPT and Perplexity.
• Retail and car parts: well-built product pages and presence on marketplaces and vehicle search portals, because AI cites stores.
• Education: program and admissions portals, plus useful content of your own, like the blogs AI already cites.

A link is not always needed: many citations come from pages that name the brand without linking to it, as we explain in backlinks versus unlinked mentions. What is needed is being on the right site. That is why the first step of an AI visibility strategy is measuring, question by question, which sources matter in your industry. Then comes earning presence in them, for example with articles in Chilean media and portals that AI already uses.

Study limitations

It covers four industries and one week of measurements (November 2-6, 2026). AI answers change from day to day, and the versions measured were those available at the time: the ChatGPT app, the Gemini app, Perplexity Sonar Pro, Claude with web search and Google's two AI formats. Domains with two or more citations were classified by hand; the rest was grouped as "other companies and blogs". Google AI Overview did not appear in every search: it answered 11 of the 50 car-parts questions and 55 of the 72 banking questions.